Blue Eyes Faded To Grey
by BookLoverDutch
Summary: 'Peter skidded to a halt next to me and put Charles down on the ground. They both looked exhausted and startled, and their hair was standing in all directions of the wind. "There are too many of them," my father panted. He was barely audible over the loud sound of the bullets. "I-I cannot stop them."' - Sequel to 'Firelocks'. Set between First Class and Days of Future Past.
1. The Man I Used To Be

_**Yep, another X-Men story. This one is a sequel to Firelocks, and it takes place in the beginning of 1963, a couple of months after First Class and ten years before Days Of Future Past.**_

 _ **Enjoy!**_

 _ **PS: It's a multi-chapter story, but it takes a while to write chapters (partly because school has begun again) so if you could be a little patient, that'd be splendid :)**_

"Dad. Dad. Dad, _please_."

I was nearly begging by then, but the only response I got was a muffled moan.

I was standing in the doorway to Charles' room, on the second floor of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters – my father's school, in case you didn't know that yet. I had been in that school for a couple of months, now, and it wasn't going quite well.

About a week ago, the war in Vietnam got worse. Many of the teachers – and most of the students as well – were taken away from the school and had to fight. The only friends that were left, were Sean (my boyfriend) and Hank.

And now Sean had disappeared as well.

That was what I wanted to talk about to Charles, but that wasn't easy, for he was lying on the carpet in the middle of his room, limbs spread, staring at the ceiling like it was the most fascinating thing in the world.

He had drunk again, I knew that. He did that quite a lot, especially since last week.

I couldn't blame him; he was sad, and he drunk to forget about what he had lost.

Raven, the girl who had been like a sister to him since he was a little boy.

Erik, one of his best friends – or so he thought.

Moira, whose memory had to be wiped so that she didn't know anything about the 'Cuba incident', and every moment before that. I didn't really like her, for she was the one who had fired the bullet that had paralyzed Charles, even though Erik was the one who had deflected it.

His ability to walk.

His students.

Most of his friends.

And now, as a last thing, he had also lost his powers.

It was because of some serum Hank had made for him; it gave him his legs back, but he couldn't use his telepathy anymore. Which was quite a bad thing, because Sean had disappeared, and I had no idea how to find him.

"Dad, come on. I need to talk to you," I tried, walking into the room.

The broken man on the carpet shook his head.

"No," he said, his voice hoarse. "Go away, Luka. Leave me alone."

I sighed, sitting down next to him, cross-legged like I always did. I wasn't planning on going away.

"Dad, please," I said. "I-I need your help. Sean is missing, and I have no idea where to look for him."

Charles turned around to face me, propping himself up on one elbow. "You are asking me to use Cerebro?"

I nodded. "Yes."

He sighed, sweeping a lock of greasy hair out of his face – I wondered how long ago he had showered for the last time. Probably days ago.

He looked at me with his greyish-blue eyes. They seemed less blue than earlier; another thing that had changed about him, I thought.

Then he shook his head.

"I am sorry, Luka," he said, looking away. "I am not going to use my powers. That part of my life is over. I... I am not the man I used to be."

I stood up, pinching my jaws on each other.

"Yeah, I can see that," I muttered, hoping that he hadn't heard me. Apparently, he hadn't, or he just didn't care.

After glancing one last time at him, I walked away, but as soon as I had reached the hallway, I collapsed against the wall, tears leaking from my eyes.

Sean was gone.

My own father refused to help me.

No one else could help me.

Sean could be dead.

He could be dead, and there was nothing I could do about it.

I had never felt more helpless, perhaps maybe when Charles was shot and I couldn't get to him. It was some sort of a shared first place on my list of most horrible things that had ever happened to me.

As I sat there on the floor, my face hidden in my knees so that nobody could see how ugly I was when I was crying, the reality suddenly seemed to fade. I knew what was happening; I was having a vision.

In case you didn't know about it yet, I had the special (and kinda weird) ability to see the future. Unfortunately, it didn't really work like it had to work, which resulted in having visions at the weirdest moments.

Like, at that moment.

 _Blue-greenish fabric. It was smooth and plastic-like; I knew that just by looking at it._

 _Something important was happening. When I just got visions without even trying to, it was always important._

 _I wanted to look up, but a bright, white light blinded me. As I blinked against it, trying to see more but failing, I turned back to reality._

I cursed under my breath, frustrated.

This had something to do with Sean, I just felt it.

It was so stupid that my visions were always pieces of a puzzle, that seemed to fit exactly at the important moment. The last time the puzzle pieces fit, it was too late. Charles had already been shot then, and I couldn't do anything. I wasn't planning on letting the same thing happen to Sean.

I just needed to find him.

Which wasn't going to be easy, because Charles refused to use Cerebro and my visions were just fucking vague. It was so damn frustrating that even my thoughts started to swear.

Sighing, I got to my feet and hoped that I didn't look like crap – which I usually looked like when I had just cried.

I just had to accept the fact that I had to figure this out on my own.

With that thought, I walked away, towards my room, trying to ignore the horrible feeling that had nestled itself under my skin.


	2. Glass and Bright White Light

_**Hi again!**_

 _ **It took me a little while to write the next chapter (as I predicted), sorry about that!**_

 _ **And, as I forgot to mention, this story could be a slight AU (as usual), kinda depends on what I decide to do with the characters. It also contains a couple of swear words, but I think you guys already noticed that :) It's nothing serious, though, don't worry.**_

 _ **Okay, enough of this annoying Writer's Note.**_

 _ **Enjoy!**_

Things got even worse, the days after that.

Charles started to drink more and more every day, and he often locked himself in his room. I barely ever saw him, and when I did, he was always shuffling through the hallways, looking nearly sick, often with a nearly-empty bottle in his hand. He wouldn't even look at me.

I hated to see my father like that, and I surely would have done something about it if my anxiety about Sean wasn't about to swallow me whole.

Since my vision four days ago, I hadn't had any, anymore. I just kept dreaming about glass, glass and bright, white light, and I didn't have a clue what it meant. I was starting to grow restless, and I was – kinda – starting to understand how Charles must feel; constantly worried, constantly helpless, constantly trying to find a solution.

To him, the solution was drinking, but there was no way I was going to do that. I was only fifteen years old. And I also didn't want to do that to Hank. In the whole house, I was the only other one who still had a little bit of sanity. If I would because an alcoholic as well, he'd pack all his stuff and run away, screaming.

I was just thinking about what a disaster that would be when I walked into the kitchen.

It was early in the morning, like, really early in the morning. The sun hadn't even set yet – I guessed that it was about half past five.

I couldn't sleep, because my mind was really good at thinking up bad things that could be happening at that very moment. That night, I had had a nightmare about Erik sending me a video in which he had filmed himself while torturing Sean. Erik was laughing the whole time while stabbing my redheaded boyfriend with a knife.

I woke up covered in sweat and hoping with my entire being that that dream wasn't a vision. I assumed that it wasn't; I would have felt that. And my dream also wasn't vague enough to be a vision.

Anyway, I was walking into the kitchen, barely awake, in my wrinkled pajamas and with my hair standing in all directions of the wind, when I tripped over something and nearly fell. I rubbed the side of my face with my hand; apparently, I was sleepy enough to forget to turn the light on.

Shaking my head at my own stupidity, I felt for the light switch. When the lamps went on, I saw that the thing I had tripped over was my father, who was lying on the floor. He looked like he had fallen flat on his face, and maybe that was the case. If he had gotten drunk enough, it surely couldn't have hurt much.

At that moment, the only thing that went through my head was: _Seriously?_

I squatted down next to him and shook his shoulder. "Dad. Dad, wake up."

He moaned loudly, that kind of sound someone makes when he wakes up and already gets tired again at the idea of getting up. He rubbed his eyes and propped himself up on one elbow. Apparently, my hair was utterly terrifying, because Charles flinched before relaxing.

"Oh, it is just you," he said, his voice still hoarse. When he looked around, he frowned. "What am I doing in the kitchen?"

I shrugged. "I don't know," I replied.

My father was silent for a moment before squeezing his eyes shut and rubbing his temple, kinda what people do when they have a headache, and I was pretty sure that that was the case.

"Come on," I said, standing up. "You've got a hangover. Let's... get you to Hank, or something."

He nodded and tried to struggle up, but fell down again. He winced when he hit the hard floor.

"I think I need the serum again," he said.

He hadn't even finished his sentence when he suddenly groaned in pain. I knew what was happening; the serum was starting to spend its force, so Charles started to hear the thoughts of others again.

It couldn't be many, though. Most people were still asleep. I wondered if he could hear their dreams, too. It must be annoying.

That thought pulled me back to reality.

"Wait here," I said to my father. It was a stupid remark; how would he be able to go away, if he couldn't walk? "I'll go get Hank."

When he nodded, I sprinted away.

My bare feet pounded on the wooden floor as I ran towards Hank's room. I didn't even bother knocking before hurling into the room. The young scientist blinked sleepily as he felt for his glasses.

"Luka?" he asked. "What are you doing here? It's the middle of the night, you know."

I ignored him completely, which wasn't the most polite thing I had ever done in my life.

"Charles needs the serum again," I said.

Hank rubbed the side of his face with one hand. Saying nothing, he stood up, pulled a drawer open and grabbed a syringe. Then he walked out of the room, followed by me.

He didn't need to ask where Charles was; the agonized cries told him enough. Hank sped up his pace when the screams grew louder. I followed his lead.

Blackness took over my sight as I sprinted into the kitchen, and I nearly fell. Out of breath, I leaned against the wall.

I heard that Hank kneeled down by Charles, and that Charles thanked him, but it all seemed far away.

Really, really far away.

I knew what was happening.

I was having a vision.

Finally.

It was just a really bad timing.

 _Brown eyes._

 _Young, dark brown eyes in a pale face._

 _It were the eyes of a child, but it was a child that had been through a lot, there was no doubt about that._

 _As I watched, the image zoomed out, and I saw the little boy's whole face. He looked curious, but also sad._

 _I wondered how old this boy was. Four, maybe five years old? Who was he?_

 _I wanted to know more, but the annoying, bright light that kept interrupting all of my visions appeared again, and I snapped out of my vision._

When I blinked, I realized that I was looking into a different pair of eyes, grey ones this time. Hank was sitting in front of me, and he was looking a little worried.

"Luka?" he asked. "Are you all right?"

I cleared my throat and nodded.

"Yeah, fine," I said. "It was a vision."

The young scientist nodded understandingly, and another voice sounded from behind him.

"What did you see?"

I looked over Hank's shoulder to see my father brush the dust off his pants and stand up. He was looking better, now that he had taken the serum, but his eyes were still red-rimmed.

I swallowed difficultly before replying: "I saw... a little boy."

"That was all?" Charles asked.

I nodded, too lost in my own thoughts to worry about the somewhat rude way he asked it.

"Yeah," I said, "that was all."

Then I walked towards the fridge to make breakfast, as if nothing had happened.


	3. Trapped

**_Warning: This is gonna be quite a heavy chapter. Just sayin'._**

* * *

 _A boy, a little boy, sitting in a corner._

 _I didn't immediately recognize him, but when I saw his dark eyes, I knew that it was the same boy as the boy I had seen that afternoon. He was wearing a blue-greenish shirt._

 _It was quite a strange image._

 _The first strange thing was that the walls of the room were made of glass._

 _The second strange thing was that the boy was chained. His arms were tied up to one of the walls._

 _The third strange thing was that the boy had silver hair. Of course, that wasn't_ that _strange, but I found that little kids shouldn't dye their hair. And their parents shouldn't let them. It was irresponsible._

 _It looked quite good at him, though. There was a flash, and then the boy turned to me._

 _His eyes were full of fear and sadness, maybe even anger._

 _His voice was quiet and hoarse as he whispered to me: "I thoughts someone was finally gonna save us."_

 _Then the vision started to fade, and sleep flowed over me like a wave of black ink._

 _The boy's eyes looked at me for another second before those disappeared as well._

* * *

"Hey, Carl."

I was in the kitchen, sitting on top of the table – I didn't think Charles would be very happy about that – with the phone in my hands. It was quite late in the evening, and it was cold, really cold. I was wearing a vest over a sweater.

It had been a normal day, a day like every day in the past couple of days; reading the newspaper to search for news about Sean, calling the police, worrying about Sean while staring at the wall, calling the police again, realizing I hadn't eaten in five hours, not caring because I wasn't hungry anyway, trying not to cry while thinking of all the things that could have happened to Sean, trying not to cry while thinking how miserable I was feeling, getting a headache of all that shit.

It was horrible to repeat that every day.

That was one of the reasons why I had decided to call my family, besides the fact that I was starting to get worried about them, too, for some unexplainable reason.

My stepfather's voice replied through the phone.

"Hi, Luka," he said, friendly as always. "Why're you calling?"

I thought for a second before responding: "I just wanted to know how you guys are doing."

I heard Carl snicker a little.

"We're fine, really," he said. "Soph's got a bit of a cold, but it's okay for the rest. How are you?"

"Not really good," I honestly replied.

I heard my stepfather sigh.

"I know it's hard for you that Sean's missing, darling," he said. "We're keeping our eyes and ears open. Even Soph is asking around at school. But Sean'll be fine, I promise."

I had to fight the urge to say, "No, it won't. It won't be fine, and you can't promise that. You know, I haven't told you about this yet, but my father has been shot just a couple of months ago. Two of my best friends and one of my mentors, whom I trusted, have betrayed me. A friend was killed right before my eyes. Another friend has been sent to war. My boyfriend has disappeared and I have no clue where to find him, and I'm pretty sure that if he dies, I'll die, too. Maybe my body won't die, but my soul surely will, and then I'll become just like my father; a depressed addict who is hated by everyone!"

I didn't say it, but I thought it, and at that moment, I was really, really happy that Charles couldn't read my mind.

(Even if he wouldn't use the serum and even if he'd be sober enough, he wouldn't be able to – for some strange reason, I block out his telepathy. Just saying.)

"Zoë?" Carl's voice pulled me out of my thoughts. "Are you still there?"

I realized that I had been silent for nearly half a minute, and I quickly replied: "Yeah, I'm still here. I just, eh..."

Suddenly, I got distracted by a knock on the door.

Who could that be?

What was going on?

We hadn't had any visitors in weeks.

"Eh, I'm sorry, Carl, I've got to go," I quickly said to my stepfather on the other side of the line.

He protested and asked what was going on, but I hung up and walked out of the kitchen.

I saw Hank walk towards the front door, with the same confused and surprised expression on his face as I was probably having on my face at that moment. Somewhere deep inside me, there was also a tiny spark of hope. It could be Sean. Or, though I doubted that, maybe Raven or Erik, coming to apologize.

If it was one of them, I would hit them in the face. With a chair.

Hank put his hand on the doorknob and pulled the door slightly open, just far enough to be able to peek outside.

"Good evening, gentlemen," he said, polite as always. I felt a small sting in my chest when I realized that it wasn't Sean. "I'm sorry, but haven't you seen the sign on the fence? It says 'private property'."

Someone pushed the door further open – I was pretty sure that one of the men did that. When I bent forward, I caught sight of them.

There were three men, all wearing sunglasses – even though it was already dark – and dark blue jacks with a logo on it. 'Trask Industries', the caption said. I had never seen it before.

The 'Trask'-man in the middle smiled a somewhat wicked smile; something told me that these guys weren't here to drink a cup of tea with us.

"Well, sir," he said to Hank, "this is a bit of a special occasion."

"You see," the man on the left continued, "we have discovered the presence of three mutants in this house."

Even though I could only see a part of Hank's face, I saw that he paled.

"Eh..." he stammered. "That information... could be right, yes."

The first man handed him a business card. Hank looked at it for a moment before turning to the three men again.

"'Protection against extinction'," he read out loud. "What does that mean?"

His voice trailed off, and I knew that we both realized the same thing at the same moment.

'Protection against extinction'.

These people were scared that the human race was going to extinct.

These people wanted to protect mankind from mutants, from us.

These people wanted us gone.

The man in the middle smiled his shark-like smile again.

"I think you already know what that means," he said to Hank. "Now tell me, kid... where are the mutants?"

The man on the right handed the grinning man a small, white-coloured device. It started to beep when he pointed it at Hank.

"Or are you one of them yourself?"

That was when Hank turned to me and mouthed: "Go!"

I didn't hesitate for a moment and immediately ran away, even though I'd like to secretly keep listening and maybe beat someone up, if necessary. I sprinted up the stairs, towards Charles' room.

"Dad!" I yelled as I dashed through the door.

He looked up from whatever he had been doing – reading, I thought, if he was even sober enough to do that. The empty bottle by his feet showed me that he wasn't sober enough at all.

I jerked him to his feet.

"Hey, what-" he sputtered, but I cut him off.

"There are strange men downstairs, and they want to take us away or even kill us, and we have to leave right now!"

My father looked a little vaguely at me before turning away.

"Yeah, sure," he said thickly, taking a sip of a bottle he had picked up from the floor. "Whatever you try, there is no way I am going to get out of this room."

He hadn't even finished his sentence when an ear-piercing scream split the air.

Tears popped up in my eyes when I realized who was screaming.

Hank.

They had Hank.

I was on the edge of crying – what was happening? Was Hank even still alive? What were they doing to him? – but I did have my father's attention, now.

"I think you are right," he said, walking in the totally wrong direction. "We should go indeed."

At that moment, I heard three pairs of heavy shoes on the stairsteps. I started to run away, dragging Charles with me.

I realized too late that we were trapped.

I went into a room before slowing down.

This was it.

We couldn't go anywhere else.

All we could do now, was hide.

Apparently, the drunk man next to me didn't agree with that. He immediately zigzagged towards the window and pulled it open.

I rushed forward as I realized what he was going to do.

"You're not planning on jumping, are you?" I hissed.

He turned to face me.

"Yes, I am," he said, surprisingly calmly.

I sighed in frustration.

"Come on, please," I nearly begged. "Dad, you're not thinking straight."

I knew he was terribly afraid of heights. So was I. Neither of us wanted to jump out of a window five metres above the ground and risk breaking our legs, or worse.

My father's eyes went hard again.

"Do you want to die, then?" he snapped. "Do you want to die? Like Hank did just half a minute ago?"

I bit my lip as I felt a sting in my heart.

Hank was dead. I had already known it, but now it got confirmed, and it _hurt._

In a couple of seconds, we could be dead as well.

I could hear the heavy footsteps in the hallway behind me, and I closed my eyes for a moment.

No, I didn't want to die.

Yes, I knew that there were only two options.

Yes, I knew that those options were fighting the three trained adults (which wasn't going to work, because Charles was drunk like a skunk, and I just wasn't built to fight) or jumping out of that window and risk getting hurt.

No, I didn't like that. But it was the only way.

I opened my eyes again.

"I will go first," my father said, sitting down on the windowsill. "I will catch you."

"Okay."

"Okay," he repeated, suddenly seeming scared and nervous. "Three, two, one."

Then he jumped.

I didn't have time to see if it was going well.

The door behind me slammed open and the three men hurled into the room. I flinched when I saw that two of them were carrying guns.

Shit, I hadn't expected that.

They looked around for a moment – a moment in which I was frozen in place, hoping that they wouldn't see me – before the one without a gun pointed at me and yelled: "Over there!"

The others aimed at me, and exactly at that moment, I could hear my father's thick voice coming from outside.

"Jump!" he yelled.

I didn't hesitate.

I acted immediately.

Unfortunately, 'immediately' wasn't fast enough.

I jumped out of the window – not as smoothly as I was hoping; I stubbed my toe at the windowsill – but I didn't see that the man on the right fired his gun.

I also didn't see the small dart that shot out of it.

I only felt a sharp prick when it bored itself into the back of my neck.

Immediately, everything went blurry. I could barely feel that I was falling through the air. I could barely feel that my father caught me.

The last thing I thought was: _Oh, an anesthetizing dart._

 _Great._

Then I passed out.

* * *

 _ **I know. I'm a horrible person.**_

 _ **I killed Hank.**_

 _ **Or not?**_

 _ **You'll find out... *evil laughing***_


	4. The Rat-Catcher of Hamelin

_"Don't you dare touch her!"_

 _Sean's voice split the darkness of my unconsciousness._

 _"Leave her alone!"_

 _I felt a hand on my shoulder, and someone snickered behind me. I still couldn't see anything._

 _Something cold and hot at the same time touched the back of my neck, and I fell on the ground._

 _"Luka!" I heard my father yell, his voice breaking._

 _My boyfriend's voice followed. He sounded furious._

 _"I'm gonna kill you, Trask!"_

 _A third, amused voice sounded from behind me – Trask?_

 _"I would like to see you try," the man said._

 _Then the vision disappeared._

* * *

As soon as I had gained enough consciousness to wake up, I shot upright.

"Sean... Sean is..." I gasped, making my father, who had been sitting right next to me, jump up.

"Whoa, you scared me," he said, obviously startled. Then he bent forward, looking worried and also a bit curious. "What did you see?"

I swallowed difficultly, wondering how I could get all those words out of my mouth at once but also making sure Charles understood me.

"Sean is alive," I blurted out. "Those Trask guys have captured him. And they are..." I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing myself to get my thoughts straight. "They're going to do something to me. I don't know what, but it's bad enough to make Sean say that he's going to kill someone."

Charles swore under his breath, but I barely even noticed it; at that moment, something else had my attention.

I had only realized then how cold it actually was, and how hard the floor beneath me was, and how filthy everything was. We weren't in the mansion, anymore. I was pretty sure about that.

We had been chased away from there by the same people that had killed Hank and had captured Sean.

I turned to my father.

"Where are we?" I asked him.

He looked away.

"Well, eh..." he stammered. "We, eh..."

His voice trailed off when I stood up. I was still a little dizzy, but I couldn't care less about that. I looked around with a shocked look on my face.

There were two brick walls around us, on top of the filthiest pavement I had ever seen in my life. A narrow stream of fishy-looking water was right next to my feet. In a corner, there were some empty cardboard boxes and a garbage can.

We were underneath a bridge, without money, far from home.

Could it get any worse?

"It is horrible, isn't it?" my father asked me.

I shrugged with one shoulder, trying to stay positive. One of us was already depressed. If I'd get low, too, we'd be lost.

"At least it's dry, here," I said.

It was true; it was snowing, but we had a roof above our heads. So to speak, of course. It was just a bridge.

I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn't see the man that came walking towards us.

In fact, I'd swear that he hadn't been there half a second ago.

He was dressed in a long, dark grey coat, and brown boots, and a scarf that covered his mouth and nose. Impossibly bright, green eyes looked curiously at me from behind greasy, dark hair and from beneath a hood. He was about two metres away from us when he greeted us.

"Good evenin', sunshines," he said.

He spoke with a strange accent. I wasn't sure where he came from.

My father looked up; apparently, I wasn't the only one who hadn't seen the stranger. He slowly stood up. I knew what he was thinking – maybe this man could be dangerous. I didn't think so, though. He looked scary, but his eyes were kind.

"Who are you?" I heard Charles say.

The man rolled his eyes.

"I'm the Rat-Catcher of Hamelin," he replied sarcastically. "Question is, mate, what're you guys doin' here? It's not quite safe on the streets, y'know."

"We know," my father said, pushing me behind him. Was he being protective?

"Then what're you doin' here?" the man repeated. "You'd better just answer me, mate. I don't have all day. What're you doin' here?"

That seemed to make my father think.

"I could ask you the same thing," he then said.

What the hell was he _doing?_

Why was he being so stupid?

The man shrugged.

"That's an easy question, mate," he replied, grinning. "I'm here 'cause I'm lookin' for you two."

That was when I stepped forward, partly because I couldn't endure another one of my father's vague answers, and partly because I was too curious.

"You were looking for us?" I asked the man. "Why?"

The stranger shrugged again.

"'Cause you're mutants, just like me," he said. "And you're lookin' for someone. I wanna help."

"Wait," I said, starting to get a headache. "You're a mutant?"

"Yeah," the man said. "Stop repeatin' everythin' I say. Tryna make a point here. You guys need help, and I wanna help. So get your asses off the pavement and follow me."

Then he turned around and started to walk away.

My father and I shared a look.

"Now what are we going to do?" I asked him. "Are we going to follow him?"

Charles shook his head.

"No, we are not," he replied. "What if he has bad purposes? I... I do not want something to happen to you. You have already been through so much."

I laughed humourlessly, feeling something snap inside me.

"I'm sorry, Dad," I said, "but you're only saying that because you're selfish. This isn't about me. This is about _you_. You don't want to lose me because you won't have anyone or anything left. Well, guess what? I've been imprisoned with you for long enough. I've got my limits, too. I've lost a lot of friends, too. I'm not going to lose Sean as well. And seeing as you're not going to help me, someone else will have to. Goodbye."

After spitting out those last, bitter words, I stood up and ran away, leaving Charles shocked, cold and completely alone.

* * *

 ** _Awww..._**

 ** _This chapter, guys. It made me so sad. Poor Charles. Poor Luka, too. But it was the only way to make Luka meet her new enemy... or new friend? That's for me to know and for you to find out :)_**

 ** _Anyway, have a nice day! And remember: I don't like killing characters (okay, okay, I killed an OC once or twice, but you know what I mean), especially favorite characters, so don't get nightmares about Charles freezing to death or something :)_**


	5. Reivax Selrahc

I didn't say a word while walking next to the man.

He tried to start a conversation with me a couple of times – "Hey, what happened? Why'd you run away from that guy?" "Whatcha name, actually?" "D'ya like cats?" – but I never replied.

It was like the world had disappeared and I was walking inside my own bubble of misery.

I felt completely numb.

I had lost too much, too many friends. Hank was dead. Raven and Erik had betrayed us. My family was far away and impossible to reach without money for a bus ticket. And now I had also destroyed whatever was left of the bond between me and my father.

 _No_ , I corrected myself. That bond was already lost long ago. This man wasn't the man he used to be.

This wasn't Charles Xavier, a caring, strong man, a father. This broken, angry, addicted shell of a man wasn't my father, and he could never be. This was Reivax Selrahc, the exact opposite of the man that used to be my father.

And still...

I had left someone when he needed my help the most. There were so many things that could go wrong.

What if he ran out of serum? I knew that he was always carrying extra with him, but what if?

And what if those Trask guys found him?

What if he froze to death in his shirt and thin trousers with loose-fitting legs?

What if those things happened _at the same time?_

Only my stubbornness stood in my way of running back.

A gloved hand waving in front of my eyes pulled me out of my thoughts.

"Hello?" the green-eyes man said. "You in there?"

I nodded, feeling a little dazed, as if I had just woken up.

"Ah, 'kay," he said, grinning behind his scarf. "Just checkin', 'cause you didn't seem to hear me. I said we were there."

I nodded again and looked around. We were standing in a hallway with several doors. Strange; I hadn't even noticed that we had walked into an apartment building.

The man, whose mouth and nose were still covered, pulled a small key out of his pocket. Before he unlocked the door we were standing in front of, he turned to me.

"Eh, and redhead," he said to me, "you may wanna cover up that hair."

I frowned, but pulled my hood over my red locks. Why was this guy acting so strange?

He nodded, then turned the key. When the door swung open, he immediately rushed into the small flat to pick up a black cat that was sitting right behind the door. The gracious animal meowed and snuggled into the man's neck.

While he was petting the cat, I looked around in the flat.

It was small but filled with furniture, and in some way cosy. Green- and black-coloured chairs were spread through the room, making it look messy, but the everything was clean. The walls were painted neon green and there were two black doors; one for the bathroom and one for the bedroom, I guessed. There was also a small kitchen in one of the corners, but the lights were turned off there, so I couldn't quite see it.

I got pulled out of my thoughts by the cat's hissing. The guy pet the animal in his arms on its head.

"Shh, Taurus," he murmured. "She's a friend. She's like me."

The cat looked at me with its bright green eyes. It looked a bit like its owner, I thought. Funny.

"Taurus?" I asked. "Is that his name?"

"Yep."

"Why?"

"'Cause he hates everything red."

"Ah."

So that's why I had to cover up my hair.

"You like... green, I assume?"

"That's right, too."

Judging by the twinkle in his eyes, the guy was smiling.

He put Taurus back on the the ground and took off his hood. He had black hair that came to his shoulders, with one green lock in it.

When he pulled the scarf away, I realized that he actually wasn't that old. He was still a teenager, seventeen, maybe eighteen years old. His jaw was covered in the shadow of dark stubbles. Suddenly, he looked a lot less scary, maybe even a little vulnerable.

When a question popped up inside my head, I immediately asked it.

"Why do you want to help me?" I asked.

He looked down at his boots while standing up.

"Because Trask's got my sister," he said, a lot quieter than just. He bit his lip. "They've got Angel."

My mouth dropped open when I remembered it.

Angel had told us her story once, on the day Sean and I first joined the group.

She had told us that she and her twin brother were orphans, and that they had lived in a small flat since they were twelve years old. They had to work to be able to pay for the flat, and that was how she got her job.

The night before Charles and Erik came to pick her up, she and her brother had had a fight. She had yelled at him, saying that she would leave him forever and never come back.

She had also mentioned her brother's name.

What was it?

"Nate," I remembered. "Your name is Nate Salvadore."

He nodded.

"I wanna help you 'cause I wanna make it up to her," he whispered unhappily. "Sure, we had a fight, but she's my sister. I want her back."

He sounded so sure, sad but so incredibly sure.

I didn't have the heart to tell him that his sister was probably dead.


	6. Well Done, Firelocks

_That night's vision was a blur of images and colours._

 _I saw blue-green, plastic-like fabric around meagre bodies._

 _The reflection of blue eyes – my own blue eyes – in glass._

 _The silver-haired boy's dark eyes._

 _A flash of metal._

 _Something that radiated blue light._

 _Bright red on an impossibly pale skin._

 _The closed eyes of someone with long lashes._

 _Blinding, white light._

 _Glass._

 _And that logo, that same logo over and over again._

 _Trask Industries._

 _It filled me with rage every time I saw it. I wanted it to go away. After another second, the logo disappeared._

 _Only the white after-image was still visible inside my eyelids before everything went black and I fell asleep for real._

* * *

The sound of an opening door woke me up. I blinked sleepily and propped myself up on one elbow.

I was lying on the couch, in a sleeping bag, in the middle of Nate's living room. For a moment, I smiled a little.

I had been right when I decided that I could trust him. I wasn't dead, at least.

I turned around to see Angel's brother walk into the room. He looked like he had just woken up, even though he had already put on jeans and a vest.

And he was looking at me with a bit of a guilty look on his face.

"Sorry," he said. "Didn't mean to wake you up."

I shrugged with one shoulder.

"It doesn't matter," I said, sitting upright. "I'm glad that I'm awake. Now I can't have any more nightmares."

It was true; my imagination had been overacting that night. Horrible images of people dying popped up inside my head every five minutes. First Charles, then Sean, then Sophie and Carl and my mother. Alex. The silver-haired boy from my visions, even though I didn't even know his name. The few friends I had left in the Netherlands. The friends I had at the School for Gifted Youngsters.

Pretty much everyone I knew.

"Yeah, I know how you're feelin'," Nate replied, walking towards the small kitchen. He didn't need to say more; I knew what he meant.

Of course he was worried about his sister. I wondered if he even knew what she had done.

She had seen a friend getting killed and hadn't done anything. She had tried to kill Sean. And maybe other things that I didn't even know about.

And still, even if he knew about all that stuff, Nate wanted her back.

I didn't know how that felt. I always only had Sophie, and she would never become a 'bad guy', as she called it herself. When we were little kids and we were playing, she always wanted to be the hero.

I involuntarily wondered if I would ever see her again. If I'd die while trying to get Sean away from Trask Industries, it'd be really hard for anyone to explain it to her. She didn't know that I was a mutant. She and Carl didn't even know that mutants existed.

If I'd die, I would become one of those newspaper headlines that said that 'a teenage girl passed away during a tragic accident'. I already grew really annoyed at the thought of it, but my thoughts got interrupted by Nate's voice.

"You know," he said, grinning a little, "I just realized that we've known each other for over six hours, and I don't even know your name."

I snickered when I realized that he was right.

"I'm Luka," I introduced myself while crawling out of the sleeping bag. The green-and-black-coloured carpet tickled my bare feet. "Luka Xavier."

I hadn't meant to say my father's last name, but it went automatically. Nate looked at me from behind the kitchen counter.

"So you're professor Xavier's daughter?" he asked me. His tone was normal, without the disbelief that most people had when they asked that question. It was kinda comforting, for some reason.

I nodded.

"Yeah," I replied.

Nate turned around to whatever he was doing again.

"It's terrible, what happened in Cuba," he said. "And that the school has closed."

I nodded again, walking into the kitchen.

"He's not... a very nice person, anymore," I said, even though it was an understatement. He was much worse than 'not a very nice person'. "That's why I left him alone."

Nate turned around, really, really slowly. "Wait a sec," he said. "You're sayin' that that wreck you left under the bridge... is your _father?_ "

"Yes," I replied, looking down at my feet. "I'm a horrible person, aren't I?"

Nate smiled a little.

"Well," he said, "if you found that he deserved it, then maybe it was the right thing to do, isn't it?"

I didn't have time to reply. A knock on the door sounded.

The first thing I thought was: _Shit. Those Trask guys have found us._

Apparently, Nate thought the same thing.

"You go hide," he said to me. "If it's the same people that've captured Angel, we might be in danger."

I nodded shakily and turned around, but then I changed my mind.

"No, I'm not going to hide," I said. I wasn't going to let someone else die because he wanted me to be safe. Hank already had. I wasn't going to let Nate die, too.

The dark-haired boy seemed to think for a moment before walking towards the door.

I bent a bit forward, preparing to fight. When Nate unlocked the door, I attacked.

Unfortunately, the person that had knocked wasn't who I thought it was.

It was my father.

He could dodge my fist just in time.

"Whoa," he said, stepping back. His eyes were huge and startled.

After a stunned moment, I punched him in the face, anyway.

"Luka!" Nate shouted, shocked. "What're you _doing?_ "

I was breathing heavily, trying to ignore the pain in my knuckles.

 _"Well done,"_ a voice inside my head said with an evil snicker. _"Again. He deserved that."_

I stepped back as I realized what I had done.

I had hit my father in the face.

The person who had done that, wasn't me, but it was at the same time. This was a totally different side of me.

This was Firelocks.

I wanted her to fuck off.

Looking away, I bit my lip.

 _Shit, shit, shit. Now I've really gotten people to hate me._

 _Well done, Luka._

 _Well done, Firelocks._

"I-I'm so sorry," I stammered.

I was ready to run away like a coward, but Charles' voice held me back.

"It does not matter," he said, rubbing his cheekbone with one hand, exactly at the place where I had hit him. Guilt washed over me once again. "I-I deserved that, I guess."

The Firelocks-side of me wanted to scream: "Yes, you did!" but the Luka-side remained quiet and only looked down at her feet. Nate didn't say anything, which seemed unusual for him.

After a terrible moment of awkward silence, Charles seemed to realize something.

"Oh, I nearly forgot the reason I came here," he said, suddenly brightening up. "There is a truck with Trask Industries written on it. If we hurry, we could climb on it and see where it takes us."

I knew that we all thought the same thing.

Maybe that truck could get us into Trask Industries.

Maybe it could get us to Sean. And to Angel.

Maybe we could save them.

"Okay," I said, straightening up. "Let's go. I don't want to miss this chance."

"Me neither," Nate agreed.

I turned to Charles.

"And you?" I asked him. "What are you going to do? Are you going to stay here?"

He shook his head.

"No," he replied firmly. "I am coming with you. I cannot stay here and cross my fingers for you. I want to help. Make my daughter happy. Avenge Hank, if possible."

He looked me right in the eyes, and for the first time since the Cuba Incident, I saw the bright blue from his eyes again. The kind blue eyes that had faded to dull grey, but now their brightness was coming back. I could feel it.

I was getting my father back, step by step.

At the same time, I felt a weird sense of déjà-vu. Charles had asked me, right before we left the mansion to defeat Shaw, if I wanted to stay in the mansion, to stay safe. I had said no. I had told him that I wanted to fight for what was important to me. I had wanted to keep my family safe from a nuclear war.

I smiled a little at the thought of the good old times. When still thought that Shaw was my father. When Sean and I were together. When everything was nice and everyone was nice to one another, when nobody betrayed their friends.

Nate's voice pulled me out of my thoughts.

"Maybe we should go," he said, sounding surprisingly calm.

I swallowed difficultly as I realized what we were about to do. We were about to sneak into the facility from the people that had killed Hank. We were about to risk getting killed.

"Yeah," I replied before I could get lost in my thoughts again. "We-We should go."

With that, Nate closed the flat's door behind him and locked it. He didn't know that that was the last time he would ever do that. None of us knew, not even me – the girl that could see the future. I didn't have time for a vision. It wasn't important.

At that moment, I had to focus on the things that were happening at that moment.

Saying nothing, we started to walk. The only sound was the crunching of the snow under our shoes, and the only words that were spoken were Charles' "left" or "right" when he told us where to go.

After about ten minutes, he stopped behind a corner.

"There it is," he said, pointing at a blue-coloured truck. The logo that followed me in my nightmares was painted on the side.

Five people in suits and sunglasses were walking around the car. I wondered how we were ever going to get in without getting caught. Apparently, Charles had exactly the same thought.

"How are we ever going to get into that truck without getting caught?" he asked.

Nate smiled next to me.

"What?" I asked, confused. "What's so funny?"

The boy's grin grew wider. "Ever wondered what my superpower is?"

"No," I replied honestly.

Nate turned to face both me and Charles.

"Take my hands, mates," he said, more serious than I had ever heard him speak. "Take my hands, and whatever happens, don't let go of 'em."

Frowning, I gripped his gloved left hand. Charles followed my lead. At the moment that their fingers touched each other, we all disappeared.

I gasped as I realized what Nate's power was.

He could make himself and others invisible.

"It's awesome, isn't it?" Nate's amused voice came out of nowhere. "Now let's walk towards that truck. It looks like those guys're about to leave."

He was right; the men in the suits were walking into the truck. The motors started. The next moment, I was being dragged towards the open shutter of the cargo hold by Nate's invisible hand. I hoped nobody would notice our footsteps in the show. Apparently, nobody did.

Angel's brother pulled me into the truck – I stubbed my toe because I couldn't see my own feet – and closed the shutter behind us. I wanted to let go of his hand and appear again, but Nate hissed warningly.

"There's a camera," he breathed. The next thing I knew was that something in the corner of the ceiling fell to the ground.

Nate had destroyed the camera.

Now he let go of me. Immediately, we all appeared again. It was dark, but I could see that Nate was grinning.

"You're right," I said to him, smiling back. "It _is_ awesome."

With that, the long ride towards Trask Industries began.


	7. Alarm Bell

After about three hours or so – though it felt like years – the truck's motor stopped. Nate stood up from his spot on the floor. He held out his hands to Charles and me. We grabbed them at the same time.

The next moment, the shutter opened and a guy in Trask uniform and with sunglasses on stepped into the truck. Nate pulled us past him and towards the street. We invisibly crossed the pavement and ended up in front of a huge building.

'Trask Industries', was written on it in dark blue letters.

"C'mon," Nate whispered, "let's do this."

I nodded, though of course, he couldn't see that. We walked through the glass double doors, into a big lobby.

I looked around. The place was abandoned, except for one guy, who was just sitting on a plastic chair and reading a newspaper.

"Look," Nate breathed next to me – he sounded just as excited and frightened as I was.

We were finally going to get our loved ones back. But where were they?

How would they react?

What had Trask done to them?

Were they even _alive?_

I was sure that Sean was alive, but what about Angel?

"There's a door behind that desk," Angel's brother whispered. He was probably pointing at something, but he was invisible so I couldn't see that.

I squinted – for some reason, I couldn't see very well when I was invisible, as if there was a wall between me and the world that made everything look blurry – and saw indeed a white-painted door behind the shiny wooden desk in the back of the room. The door was standing ajar.

Now it wasn't Nate who was pulling us; I was.

I nearly dragged the two men behind me towards the open door. An alarm bell rang inside my head, but I ignored it with everything I had.

I didn't know how, but I knew where to go.

Behind the door, there was a long, white hallway. There were several doors on our left but only one, a glass door, on our right, at the end of the corridor. It was closed, but after smashing against it with my shoulder, it slammed open.

When I hurled into the room, I nearly burst out crying.

Sean was sitting in the middle of the gigantic space, on the floor. I only knew that it was him because of his eyes, which were just as blue as always. The rest of his face was hidden behind some kind of mask.

 _To keep him from screaming,_ I realized. _To keep him from breaking the thick glass walls that surrounded him._

His head was shaved bald. Biting my lip, I let go of Nate's hand and hurled forward.

To me, nothing else existed but the boy on the floor; I didn't pay attention to anything else. Which wasn't the smartest thing I had done in my life, but oh well.

Sean looked startled – of course, I realized, I had just appeared out of the blue – but hugged me back when I wrapped my arms around him.

"Luka," he breathed, his voice horribly hoarse. "I-I'm so happy to see you."

I couldn't respond because I was sobbing too hard. We sat there for about twenty seconds before the alarm bell rang once again.

 _Wait a minute!_ it yelled. _Don't you think that that went a little too easy?_

 _Don't you think that this is some kind of a trap or something?_

I had just enough time to gasp before I heard the footsteps of running people on the floor.

They had found us.

I turned to Nate and Charles, who had appeared as well.

Nate looked scared as hell.

"Take my hand, Luka!" he yelled, hurling towards me. "Now!"

But it was too late. At that moment, a guard in Trask uniform appeared behind him.

The guy was carrying some kind of stick that radiated a blue-ish light.

 _A taser,_ I realized, just too late.

The thing had already touched Nate's arm. The black-and-green-haired boy fell to the ground with a scream.

"Hey!" I yelled at the guards, standing up.

 _Your turn, Firelocks._

It was like an unknown force took over my body. I kicked and punched and hit the men in the face with two fists, but unfortunately, it was no use.

Before I even realized what was happening, something cold and hot at the same time – the taser – touched the back of my neck. Immediately, all of my senses got shut down.

I could just feel that my cheek hit the floor before everything went black.


	8. Chinese

**_I am so, so sorry that you had to wait for so long... There's just a lot on my mind and I just want to write waaayyy too many stories at the same time and then there's also school and I really need to stop talking right now so you guys can read this chapter._**

 ** _Warning: This is a bit of a shocking chapter._**

* * *

When I woke up, the first thing I saw was a bright light.

It made black spots appear in front of my eyes. After blinking a couple of times, I saw that I was still in the room where I was yesterday; the huge space with glass walls and bright light.

 _Shit._

I looked around.

There were five other people in the room, all of them dressed in a blue-greenish shirt, chained and attached to a transparent tube, which was filled with a strange, yellow-ish fluid. The stuff looked slightly familiar, but I didn't know where I had seen it before.

Sean was sitting exactly on the other side of the room, still unconscious, about eight metres away from me. His mask was gone, which was strange; wasn't that supposed to keep him from breaking all the glass in the building?

Nate was tied up to the wall on my left, and Charles to the wall on my right.

But there were two other people, and when I realized who they were, I couldn't help but gasp.

The young, silver-haired boy from my visions was lying about four or five metres away from me. That, of course, was a shock, but it didn't even come close to what I felt when I looked at the other guy.

His head was shaved bald, just like Sean's, and he looked so much thinner and paler than I remembered, and I nearly didn't recognize him without his glasses, but there was no doubting it.

The fifth guy was Hank.

I barely had time to close my mouth, which had dropped open, before I heard a hoarse voice on my left.

"Hey," the voice said. "Girl."

I turned to see that the little, silver-haired boy next to me was looking at me from his spot, four metres away from me. His brown eyes were curious but also a bit angry.

"Who are you guys?" he asked me. "I know who Sean and Hank are, but who's the rest?"

I blinked a couple of times before replying: "I am Luka. That guy with the green lock in his hair is Nate. He's Angel's brother. Do you know her?"

The kid's face darkened.

"Maybe," he said.

He pointed at Charles, who was still lying on the floor, but starting to wake up.

"Who is he?"

"That's Charles," I responded. "He's my father."

The boy put a silver curl behind his ears – I wondered why they hadn't shaved his hair off, like they did with Sean and Hank. Maybe they found him too young?

"Your dad is the stupidest guy in this room," he said.

"Stupid?" I asked, confused. Charles might not have done the smartest things over the past couple of weeks, but I never thought of him as stupid. "Why?"

"Well, he's the one who brought in this stuff," the boy said, pointing at the tube that was attached to his upper arm.

And then I understood it.

It was the reason why I hadn't had a vision while I was out, and why Sean's mask was gone.

The stuff that was dripping into our bodies was Charles' serum.

The one that controls his mutation.

I couldn't say anything else but "Oh."

"Yeah," the kid replied. "I thought someone was finally gonna save us, but you only made it worse. Now we're really never gonna get out of here."

He turned away, if that was even possible, because his chains were turned so that he was facing me. Let's just say that he looked away, but that he did it in such an angry way that it felt like he turned away from me.

I wondered how long he had been here. Very long, I was sure about that. Weeks. Longer, maybe.

What about his parents?

Weren't they looking for him?

What if he was an orphan?

What if Trask had killed his parents?

What if he didn't know about that?

 _Stop it, Luka,_ I strictly said to myself. _Don't think too much about that. You'll get yourself a depression._

Charles' voice on the other side of the room pulled me out of my thoughts.

 _Speak of the devil._

He was looking at the tubes that were connected to his body. He had figured it out, too.

I knew that when he cursed out loud.

"Shit."

When our blue eyes met, he swore again.

"Shit," he said. "This... This is my fault."

I didn't reply.

I wanted to reassure him, but how could I do that without lying?

He was right.

It _was_ his fault. It was his fault that we were never going to get out of here because we couldn't use our powers. It was his fault that we were possibly going to die in here.

But I didn't blame him. He couldn't know. He couldn't know that Trask could reproduce his serum and use it against us.

In fact, _I_ was the one who should have seen that coming. _I_ was the one who could see the future.

But now it was too late.

I felt so horribly stupid. I could have prevented all this.

On my left, next to the door, Nate woke up with a long moan. When he realized what had happened, he cursed, too, and started to pull at the tube with his mouth.

After a couple of seconds, he gave up.

"It's stuck," he panted.

He had barely said those simple words when the door slammed open. Sean and Hank jumped nearly two metres into the air as the loud sound woke them up. Even the boy next to me looked up.

Three guards walked into the room. There were three glowing tasers on their belts.

The man in the middle looked Nate right in the eyes.

"Nathaniel Salvadore," he said. "You need to come with us."

Nate didn't reply. He looked kinda shocked that they knew his name, and his full name.

I was shocked, too; how did these guys know that?

"Do I speak Chinese?" the guard snapped after a couple of seconds. "We're going to release your hands, kid, and if you try to do something, I'll put electricity in your body. Get it?"

Nate nodded slowly, as if he actually didn't agree with that.

The guard nodded at one of his friends behind him, who walked forwards with some sort of remote control or something in his hand. A couple of seconds later, the chains had opened, the first guard had pulled Nate to his feet and was dragging him out of the room.

"Wait!" I yelled, suddenly breaking out of my trance.

The guards turned around with an annoyed expression on their faces.

"What are you going to do with him?" I asked.

The guard on the left grinned disdainfully.

"That's not your business," he sneered.

"Yeah," the one on the right added. "You'll find out soon enough. You're next, Luka Tessa Xavier."

With that, the three guards disappeared, dragging Nate – who probably was very frustrated that he couldn't do anything without being electrocuted – with them.

* * *

 ** _So... Yeah. Hank is alive. Sean is alive and he's okay, as far as possible. Luka is on the right track to find Angel._**

 ** _One problem: they're all captured and they can't use their powers as long as the serum is in their bodies._**

 ** _How are we going to get this to a happy ending?_**

 ** _(I don't even know yet. But I got them into this situation, and I'm also going to get them out of it. Hopefully.)_**


	9. Gone

We waited for what felt like hours for Nate to come back. I didn't say a word in that time. Nobody did.

I felt empty, so horribly empty, and it wasn't because I hadn't eaten anything in days. Apparently, the serum didn't only remove my ability to see the future when I wanted to, but also the gut feeling I had when something bad was going to happen.

I realized that when the door opened and the three guards pulled Nate back into the room. The sight of him made me want to cry. He was unconscious, and one of his legs was wrapped in bandage. The white cloth was already starting to become red.

"Oh-Oh my God," I whispered.

None of the others replied. I think they were just too shocked to get even one word out of their throats.

We all watched silently as the guards tied Nate up again and left. He was just sitting there, on the white floor, his head fallen forward and his hair hiding his pale face. I watched as the first drop of blood fell off the soaked bandage and made a red spot on the spotless white floor.

Apparently, the kid next to me had noticed that I was staring, because he turned to me and said: "You'd better get used to that. There have been people here that looked a lot worse than this."

I frowned.

"There were others here?" I asked. "Before us?"

The boy nodded.

"There was some guy named Azazel," he said. The name sounded slightly familiar. I was pretty sure that Azazel had been there, the day of the Cuba Incident. "One day, they took him outside. He left with a tail. He came back without."

"Peter, please," Sean's hoarse voice sounded from the other side of the room. "I didn't need that image again."

I assumed that the boy's name was Peter.

"And Angel," the kid went on, his voice laced with something of sadness.

I – how rude of me – interrupted him before he could go on.

"She was here?" I asked. "Do you know where she is?"

Peter bit his lower lip and shook his head.

"She was like an older sister to him," Hank said quietly. It was the first time he spoke since we were here. "Yes, she was here. Two days ago, the guards took her out of this room. She was already weak; they had shaved off her hair, her wings were gone. She didn't come back. We don't know where she is."

I looked down at my reflection in the shiny floor. I knew what we were all thinking.

Angel was dead. We all knew that.

But there was hope. Didn't we assume that Hank was dead for days? That wasn't true either.

So I didn't believe it. Not yet.

Until the next day.

* * *

"Luka Tessa Xavier."

I looked up as a man's raspy voice woke me up.

My eyes opened difficultly; there was a salty crust on them. Apparently, I had cried in my sleep.

The man who was bending over me – a guard, according to his uniform – unlocked my chains with the remote control. I rubbed my painful wrists as they fell in my lap. I hadn't noticed it before, but the tube was had also gone out of my arm.

The man roughly jerked me to my feet and dragged me out of the room. I heard that Sean hoarsely yelled something like "Hey! What are you doing?" but the guard ignored him and closed the door. I noticed that there was only one guard. Apparently, they thought that I wasn't strong enough to defeat only one of them.

They were right, unfortunately. But it would have been nice if I would have been able to surprise them with my strength, if I had it.

I was daydreaming about that when the guard dragged me out of the building, into some kind of courtyard, surrounded by high, grey-coloured buildings. Trucks, like the ones I had seen before, were neatly parked on their spots. It was still a little dark; I assumed that it was very early in the morning.

The snow was cold under by bare feet and made my toes go numb. I barely had time to shiver; we were already inside another building. That was when I realized that I could ask something.

"Hey," I said.

The guard ignored me and kept pulling me forward.

"Hey," I repeated, "where are you taking me?"

"You'll find out," he growled.

Something snapped inside me, for no reason. I was fed up with this bullshit.

"No, I won't find out," I said, pulling away from the guard's iron grip. "You're going to tell me. Where. Are. You. Taking. Me?"

The man looked at me with his black eyes before responding: "Right now, I'm going to take you somewhere where you can see what happens to girls who act like you."

He roughly grabbed my shoulders and dragged me out of the building. Snow froze my toes once again.

The second building I was being dragged into, was dark. The guard put on the lamps with his remote control. After blinking against the sudden explosion of light, I saw that there were tables standing in the room, at least twenty, maybe thirty of them. There were also things on top of them, but those things were covered in white sheets.

I didn't feel really well about this – I involuntarily noticed that my gut feeling started to come back. Thank goodness.

The guard pulled me towards a table in the middle of the room. He grinned – or was it a grimace? – before pulling the sheet away.

"This is what happens to girls who misbehave."

It took me a second before my mind could register what I was seeing.

A girl, a teenager, a couple of years older that I was. Her hair was shaved off. Her eyes were closed, and her long lashes made long shadows on her impossibly pale face.

I fell on my knees as I realized who this girl was.

This girl was Angel.

And she was dead.

I had to fight back my tears.

The guard "hm"-ed satisfied before pulling me to my feet. I didn't fight him. I didn't want to die.

No, I'm lying. I would have _loved_ to die. But I couldn't do that to Sean and my father, my mother, my family, my friends. I was selfless enough to know that they'd want to die, then, too.

And what about Sophie? Who was going to explain to her that heroes didn't always win? Who was going to explain to her that I was a mutant, and that I had been killed by a man who wanted to...

I didn't even know what Trask wanted.

 _No,_ I decided. _I'm not going to die._

So I let myself be dragged out of the room again, through the snow and back into the building we just came from.

Behind the glass door, there was some kind of a hospital room or something. I knew what a hospital room looked like because I had been there when I had a broken arm, when I was eight years old.

In that room, though, the walls weren't covered in saws and knives and scalpels.

I swallowed difficultly.

Shit, what was going to happen to me? Were they going to cut the skin off my legs, like they did with Nate?

The guard pushed me forward – in some way, I was happy that he was holding me, because I was pretty sure that I would have fainted if he wouldn't be – and put me down on a table. The hard metal bruised my shoulder blades.

My wrists and ankles got tied to the table.

"Good luck," the guard said to me with a sneer. Then he left.

I tried not to shiver, but the metal table beneath me was cold as ice, and my arms and legs were bare. I felt horribly vulnerable, as I lied there in the middle of a room filled with strangers, only wearing a thin, greenish-blue coloured shirt and underpants. I involuntarily noticed that I wasn't even wearing a bra under this.

 _Oh, great._

But my thoughts got interrupted by something even worse; a woman's voice, talking to someone behind me.

"Get her drugged and prepared for the tests," she said.

"Yes, ma'am," a man replied.

The next moment, I felt a sting in my lower arm. I had just enough time to see that it was a syringe before I passed out.

* * *

When I woke up, I was back in the glass room. I didn't know for how long I had been unconscious. Hours? Days?

I looked up. Too fast. A sharp pain flashed through my head and I had to bite my lip to prevent myself from swearing. I did curse, though, when I saw my reflection in the glass from the corner of my eye.

"Shit."

They had shaved my hair off. There was an ugly cut behind my right ear.

They had shaved my head bald and they had also cut my head open.

I felt numb. All I could think was: _The reason of my codename is gone._

It was true. Sean had called me Firelocks because I had red-and-blond hair. Now I didn't have any hair at all.

I know it sounds stupid, now, but that was when I realized that this situation was hopeless. We were never going to get out of this place. Trask Industries was going to keep doing whatever they were doing – cutting us open and all the other horrible things they had planned for us – and we were going to die here, just like Angel and that Azazel guy and everyone else that had died here, without even knowing why they were doing what they were doing.

The fighter inside me was gone.

Firelocks was gone, and I feared that she was gone forever.

* * *

 ** _Goodness, I don't even know what to say about this chapter. Things are getting pretty bad here. Trask Industries is doing evil things to the good guys, Angel is dead, the guards are just being assholes, Luka's trademark hair is gone..._**

 ** _Pretty depressing, isn't it?_**

 ** _Don't worry! There's always a 'black moment' (is that what it's called? I think so) before the happy ending, right?_**

 ** _And I'm planning to write a scene where they're going to kick some evil guys' asses. I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do with it, but I'm pretty sure that Wanda (Maximoff) is gonna be in it!_**

 ** _All right, enough of this boring Author's Note (does anyone ever read these things?), have a nice day everyone! And don't let this depressing chapter ruin your day, it's all gonna be fine! :)_**


	10. Get Out of Here

It kept going like that for days, a week, two weeks. Every day, the guards took someone out of the glass room. When that person came back, he would be unconscious and injured.

None of us spoke about what they had done to us. In fact, I didn't speak at all.

Time didn't mean anything to me, anymore. It was like my life was in slow-motion and fast-forward at the same time. I only knew that when the guards had brought Nate back, it was my turn to go out of the room.

What first seemed like a temporary moment of freedom, now became my worst fear.

I was afraid of my gut feeling when something bad was going to happen.

I was afraid of the flashes of visions that were just out of my reach when the serum wasn't fully gone yet.

I was afraid that I would dream while I was unconscious.

I was afraid of making one wrong move and ending up like Angel, but I wasn't afraid of that at the same time.

Only the thought of Soph kept me from kicking one of the guards in the crotch and getting killed. I wondered if Nate also thought about Angel that way, if he only lived for her. I wondered if he knew that his sister was dead. I hadn't told him.

I hadn't told anyone about what I had seen.

Anyway, that terrible routine kept going for what felt like years, decades, centuries – though I was pretty sure that it were only a couple of weeks – before, one certain day, the door opened.

I looked up, surprised; it wasn't time to take Hank away yet, was it?

A man walked into the room. He was small, about as tall as Peter, though I was pretty sure that he was an adult – he had a moustache. He looked us in the eyes, one by one, before smiling.

"Good evening, my friends," he said.

Evening. It was evening.

I didn't know why that was such a big shock to me.

The silver-haired kid next to me squinted at the man.

"Who are you?" he asked, his tone pretty hard for a four-years-old boy.

The man laughed.

"Oh, where are my manners?" he said to nobody in particular. "My name is Bolivar Trask. I run this place."

Sean let a hiss escape from behind his teeth. I couldn't blame him; even I wanted to hit this guy in the face. With a brick.

He was the one who did all of this to us.

"What're you doin' here?" Nate said. His voice was hoarse and weak, but he still managed to sound dangerous. "I could kill you in a second, you son of a -"

Trask held up a hand and cut him off. Nate choked on the word he had meant to say.

"I am here to bring you good news," the man said with a small smile. "I have finally found what I needed to finish my Sentinel Program."

I had no idea what that meant, but it sounded bad.

"So?" Sean asked him. He sounded angry, too. "How is that good news?"

I wondered if he knew what that Sentinel thing meant. I had to ask him about that someday.

Trask looked the boy in the eyes.

"It means that you are unnecessary," he replied.

I decided that I had a very bad feeling about this. It was clear that he wasn't going to send us home.

"You will be put out of your misery. Tomorrow, early in the morning."

He looked me in the eyes and smiled a wicked smile. I shivered.

"Except for you," he said. "Because you, my dear, have an extraordinary gift, haven't you?"

I didn't reply; I wasn't going to waste my valuable words on him.

Trask walked towards me and put a hand on my shoulder.

"Hey!" Sean protested. "Don't you dare touch her! Leave her alone!"

The small man ignored him completely. He bent forward and whispered in my ear: "You could help me... If someone comes to stop me, you could see it coming... I could give you everything..."

But even without my powers, I knew that it were empty promises. I still didn't say anything.

Instead, I kicked my knee up and slammed it against the side of Trask's head.

It was enough to startle and maybe even hurt him, but if I hadn't been so weak, he surely would've been unconscious. Now I had only made him angry.

He pulled a taser out of his pocket – why hadn't I seen that coming? – and pushed it against the back of my neck. Immediately, my vision got shut down. I felt that my head fell forward.

"Luka!" my father yelled, his voice breaking. It was the first time I heard him speak in days.

Trask made a disapproving sound in the back of his throat and walked away from me; I could hear his shoes click on the floor.

"Trask!" Sean screamed furiously. "I'm gonna kill you!"

Trask snickered. "I'd like to see you try, Mister Cassidy."

Then the sound of a door slamming shut echoed through the room, and it was the last sound I heard before I lost my consciousness.

* * *

"We have to get out of here."

That was the sentence that pulled me out of the blackness. My head felt heavy, but I was awake immediately. A younger voice joined the conversation.

"We've tried to escape before," Peter replied. "Didn't end well. We got caught and tied up to the walls."

I looked up, just in time to see Hank grin weakly.

"I've got a plan," he said.

Sean raised his eyebrows.

"Well, bring it on, then," he replied. "Every second counts. We've only got hours before they'll kill us."

Hank cleared his throat, the way he always did when he still taught classes at the School. "First, Charles has to act like he's dead."

"What?" my father reacted, but Nate shushed him.

"Let him talk."

"Hopefully, the guards will release him. The serum will slowly stop working. When it does, Charles will mind-control a guard and release us. Then Peter will pick him up and Nathaniel will get us to the courtyard, where they keep the trucks. I'll get us away from here."

"Can you drive?"

"Yes, why?"

"Well... I thought... Because you don't have feet... Never mind."

"Anyway," Hank continued, as if Sean had never asked the question, "of course, the plan will only work if everyone agrees with it."

"I agree with it!" both Nate and Sean exclaimed at the same time. Peter nodded as well.

My voice broke multiple times when I said it, probably because I hadn't spoken in weeks, but I managed to whisper "I'm in."

Then all eyes, blue, grey, green and brown, were on my father. He looked away.

"So... what about you, Dad?" I asked him, focusing on making my voice sound gentle instead of desperate.

I knew how difficult this was going to be for him, to finally let the voices in again after such a long time. This could go horribly wrong. He could collapse under the weight of his powers. But it was our only chance to get out of here alive.

Finally, he looked up.

Our eyes locked.

When I saw the rare but familiar flash of bright blue in his eyes, I knew what he had decided to do.

"Let's do this," he said. "It is worth a try."

And for the first time in what felt like forever, I allowed myself to smile.

* * *

 **To be honest, I think I had way too much fun while thinking up the plan :) , I really enjoyed doing that! So, yeah, the happenings in this chapter are kinda the 'push' they needed to get out of there. Trask wants them dead, they don't want to die (well, Luka does, but you get the point), so they are going to try to get out of there! Yaay!**

 **Let me know what you think of it! Please! :)**

 **Oh, and PS: I have a couple of tests next week and I have to study for them, so maybe I won't be able to update, but I'll try to make it up to you by posting the next chapter today or maybe tomorrow... So stay tuned! (and, yeah, that's gonna be the chapter of their escape... _If_ they escape! *evil laugh*)**

 **See ya later!**


	11. It's A Smart Cat

**Here it is, guys! Chapter 11, as promised! It's an extra long chapter, so I hope it's enough for the whole week (if I don't have time to write more).**

 **Enjoy!**

 **Warning: Couple of swear words, lots of blood.**

* * *

"Dad! Dad, _please_ , wake up!"

I tried to put as much panic in my voice as possible.

I hoped that a guard would hear me. I hoped that they would release him. I hoped that my acting would be convincing enough.

My father's was, at least; he was lying so still that I couldn't help but panic a little for real.

"Dad! Dad, come on!"

"Charles?" Hank joined in. "Charles? Charles!"

The door slammed open and a very annoyed-looking woman appeared – a guard.

"Hey, what's going on?" she snapped.

I made my best on-the-edge-of-crying-face.

"My-My father," I sobbed. "He's..."

I bit my lower lip.

The woman rolled her eyes and walked towards Charles. I hoped that he'd be good enough.

"Hey. Hey!" the guard yelled in his face as she shook him.

With a sigh, she straightened up again.

"I'll be right back," she said to me.

When she walked out of the room, I'd swear that she muttered something like "Why is there always drama on the last fucking day of work?"

Sean, who was sitting on the floor next to Charles, took a moment to grin at me. I smiled back. My father stayed still.

After about thirty seconds, the woman came back. She was carrying some kind of stretcher with her.

Swiftly, as if she had done it a thousand times before – and maybe she had –, she unlocked Charles' chains and lifted him on the brancard. He couldn't have been very heavy, I involuntarily noticed.

The guard smiled a fake-looking, meant-as-comforting smile at me before rolling the stretcher out of the room.

She locked the door. With that click, the waiting started.

If I wouldn't be chained, I would have been walking circles through the room.

What if the serum didn't stop working in time?

What if my father wasn't able to control the guard?

What if someone found out what he was doing?

There were so many things that could go wrong.

We waited for a minute. Judging by the look on Sean's face, he was worried, too. I wondered if he was thinking the same things as I was.

Two minutes.

Three minutes, four minutes, five minutes. I started to grow restless and horribly frustrated that I couldn't do anything.

When I had counted 346 seconds, the door swung open.

The guard from just was standing in the doorway. She grinned and took the remote control off her belt.

The chains clicked open and the tubes sprung loose. I stood up, smiling like an idiot.

Charles had made it.

Now it was our turn to do something.

All we had to do was wait until the serum stopped working and our powers came back.

After two hundred and thirty-two seconds, Hank had gotten his full, blue, furry form back. He grinned, showing his white, sharp teeth.

Next to me, Peter jumped up. He seemed to move a lot faster, now, for some reason.

"Let's do this," he said, repeating the last words my father had said.

Hank smiled again and turned to the woman, who was still being controlled by my father.

"We're ready, Charles," he said – his voice sounded a lot deeper, but still kind. I knew how dangerous he could be when he was like this. "Where are you?"

"I am inside a room with many tables, across the courtyard," Charles replied with the woman's voice.

Hank nodded at Peter. "Your turn, kid."

The boy grinned back at him and rushed away.

Literally.

He went so fast that I could only hear the rushing of his clothes and could only feel the wind that surrounded him, as if even the air was surprised that this kid could move so fast. I was surprised, too, but I didn't have time to think about it. We had wasted enough time.

We all ran towards Nate, for he was the person who had to get us out of here. The many wounds on his legs and arms still hadn't fully healed yet, and Nate was really pale, but he was standing. When I asked him if he was all right, he nodded and replied that he was fine.

"Okay," he then said. "Let's get outta here."

Sean and I grabbed his hands, and Hank put his claws on the green-eyed boy's shoulders. Then we all turned invisible. Carefully but quickly, we started to walk.

We had nearly reached the courtyard when it went wrong. Maybe I got nervous because of the many guards in the hallway. Maybe it happened because I couldn't see well when I was invisible. Maybe I was just weak.

Anyway, I stumbled and fell.

The guards reacted immediately. Before I even realized what was happening, there were twelve guns pointed at me.

The nearest guard grinned mockingly at me. As if it wasn't bad enough yet.

"Sorry, kid," he said, "but the price of trying to escape is death. Especially on your dear friends' last night."

He aimed at me. I looked away, too scared to look.

This was it.

I was going to die.

I heard that the guard fired the gun, but the bullet never hit me.

When I looked up, carefully, I saw that Peter was standing next to the guard, who was lying on the ground. The boy was carrying Charles on his back. He must have been really strong.

I didn't even have time to thank him – of course, he had saved my life, but we still weren't safe yet. The moment that the guards had been too startled to do anything, was over.

They aimed again.

Peter grinned at me before rushing away again.

The next moment, all of the guards were lying on the ground.

"Come on!" Nate yelled from literally out of nowhere. I nodded and sprinted towards the nearest truck.

I was about two metres away from it when at least thirty armed guards came from the other buildings. They started shooting.

I screamed and dropped to the ground as I tried to hide behind the truck. My heart was pounding like crazy.

Where were Sean, and Hank, and Nate?

They were nowhere to be seen.

In some way, that was good, but it wasn't making the situation very easy.

The bullets smashed against the truck's metal – the noise was deafening – but the guards weren't only aiming at me; they were just shooting in all directions. To hit Nate, I realized. If they could kill Nate, it would become a lot easier to find the others.

Peter skidded to a halt next to me and put Charles down on the ground. They both looked exhausted and startled, and their hair was standing in all directions of the wind.

"There are too many of them," my father panted. He was barely audible over the loud sound of the bullets. "I-I cannot stop them. I am too weak."

"We've got to wait for Hank," Peter added. "We have to break the door to get into the truck. I'm pretty sure that he can do that."

He sat down on the hard asphalt. "We've just got to wait."

He was right. The guards couldn't hit us here, so we were kind-of safe.

So we waited, but not for long; only seconds after that, my father turned to me.

"Cover your ears."

"What?"

"Just do it!"

I put my hands over my ears, just in time to be safe for Sean's incredibly high-pitched screeching. The guards all dropped their weapons and collapsed to the floor.

That was when I saw the footsteps – can I call it that? I think so – of four feet and two hands in the snow. They were running as fast as they could.

That was one of the reasons why I didn't understand how it could have happened.

Wasn't it really hard to hit someone in one try, especially when that person is invisible and running?

Wasn't she supposed to be lying on the ground because of the sound's impact?

Wasn't she supposed to be out of bullets by now?

Everything seemed to happen in slow-motion.

I saw how one of the few female guards picked her gun up from the ground.

I saw how she aimed.

She only needed one bullet, one try.

The tiny piece of metal shot through the air, incredibly fast but unbelievably slowly, and _hit Nate in the side._

My father clasped his hands over his mouth. Peter hissed a word that shouldn't be in a four-years-old's vocabulary. I didn't say anything, knowing that wasting my breath didn't help anyone, as I watched Nate, Sean and Hank appear again.

Nate fell on the ground, clasping his side. Blood coloured his pale fingers bright red.

Sean didn't hesitate for a moment as he started to drag Nate towards the truck. Hank started to help him, but Sean yelled: "Go! Get that door open!"

I would have done something if my feet hadn't felt like they were glued to the ground. Hank smashed his shoulder against the truck door, and the thing simply flew out of its hinges.

I barely noticed it. All I could think was: _No, not Nate._

 _Please, not Nate._

The loud noise of the bullets started again, but the sound of the truck's motor was louder. Apparently, Hank had activated it, though I had no idea how. I didn't care either, to be honest.

"There's not enough space!" Hank yelled. "We've got to open the cargo hold!"

Peter nodded and rushed away. The doors of the cargo hold slammed open.

Before I could even blink, he was picking us up one by one. First Nate, then my father, then me.

He put me down on the cold metal and put Sean right next to me – I wondered once again how a four-years-old could be so strong. Then he pulled the doors shut and it was dark. The only light came from the many bullet holes in the left side of the metal box.

To be honest, it was actually quite a lot light.

Enough light to see how we all fell over when the truck started to drive.

Nate moaned and rolled on his back. He made a sound in the back of his throat that sounded like "Aaagh".

His blood made the right side of his blue-greenish shirt nearly black. Sean and I looked at each other, and we both said the same thing at the same time, on the same worried and scared tone.

"He's losing too much blood."

We all crawled towards the middle of the cargo hold, where the green-eyed boy was lying. It was some kind of an instinctive reaction. Even Peter came sitting in our little circle.

Charles seemed stressed and even more worried than we were; I realized that he could hear Nate's thoughts.

"What's he thinking?" I asked him. I asked him because I didn't want Nate to waste his breath.

My father swallowed difficultly. He seemed to think a moment before replying: "He is indeed losing too much blood. He is in so much pain... I-I do not think that he is going to make it."

That sentence made me collapse.

Nate was going to die.

A trembling sob went through my entire body.

Nate was going to die.

Peter cursed again. Sean put one arm around my shoulders. It was the first time he touched me in weeks, but I barely noticed it. My father remained silent.

The only sounds were the motor's humming and Nate's quick breathing.

He was going to die.

I didn't know how, but I knew it.

After a horrible, long moment, a hoarse voice broke the silence.

"L-Luka."

 _Nate._

"Nate," I responded, because it seemed the only right reply.

I crawled forward, so that I was on my knees by his side. A syrup-like substance coloured my knees red, but I couldn't care less.

Nate looked me right in the eyes, though I wasn't sure if he could actually see me; the green of his eyes had faded to something near white.

"N-Nate," I stuttered again. I was on the edge of crying. Maybe I was crying already. I didn't know.

The green-and-black-haired boy squeezed his eyes shut before asking the question I had avoided for a very long time.

"Angel's dead, isn't she?"

I swallowed difficultly. Sure, I wanted to reassure him so that he could die in peace.

But how could I do that without lying to him?

After a moment of silence, I nodded. "Yes. She-She is. I'm sorry, Nate."

He curled his lips in the ghost of a smile.

"Don't be sorry," he said, his voice nothing more than a hoarse whisper. "It's not your fault. It's Trask's fault. I'll kick his ass the next time I see him."

I didn't have the heart to tell him that he was about to die.

His breathing was starting to slow down. _Not much time left._ For some reason, that sentence was in my head.

"I'm sorry," I whispered again, my voice shaking. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so horribly sorry."

I was sorry that Angel was dead. I was sorry that I couldn't do anything about it. I was sorry that I hadn't fought harder, that he had been shot, that he was going to die. I was sorry that we had come across him, and that we had pulled him into this. I was sorry about everything that happened.

Nate looked really concentrated for a moment, as if he was listening to something – was Charles talking inside his head? – and then he looked me in the eyes again.

"Luka," he said.

"Yes?"

"Could you do me a favor?"

"Of course."

"If I'm not gonna make it, will you take care of Taurus?"

Taurus. The cat.

I had nearly forgotten about him.

"Don't you think that he's starved by now?" I asked him, carefully.

Nate smiled again, wider this time. He breathed in deeply.

"Don't think so," he whispered. "It's a smart cat."

I wondered that if he had known that those words were the last words he would ever say, he would've said something else. I didn't think so.

He breathed out and never breathed in again.

His eyes fell shut and never opened again.

His chest fell and never rose again.

I bit my lip until I tasted blood.

Nate was dead.

One single teardrop rolled down my cheek, and it was the beginning of the crying that lasted until dawn.

* * *

 **Guys, I seriously cried while writing this. I'm so sorry. I killed Nate. I killed Nathaniel Salvadore, Angel's twin brother, the 'Rat-Catcher of Hamelin'.**

 **Did someone even like him? Or did you think that he was just another annoying OC?**

 **I'm so sorry...**

 **But I promise, it's going to be better! Promise!**

 **PS: Thank you so much for nearly 500 views! I love you guys!**


	12. Long Brown Hair and Red Pajamas

**Aaaaand I'm back! I didn't have time to write for a couple of days, but now I have, and here's the next chapter! And, yeah, it's with Wanda in it, as I promised you a couple of chapters ago!**

 **Well, enough of my stupid and very boring Author's Note...**

 **Enjoy!**

I cried until the early morning sun lit up the small space. I only knew that at some point, both Sean and my father had wrapped their arms around me, and that I felt a little safe, for the first time in ages. Peter just stayed in his corner and awkwardly looked at us. I didn't think that he knew what to do.

The first words were spoken at about eight o'clock or so in the morning. Peter pulled himself to his knees and crawled towards a small hole between our space and the place where Hank was. His blue fur was visible through the tiny circle. I wondered if he even knew what was going on. He did, probably. I was pretty sure that my father had told him at some point.

"Hank?" Peter asked.

"Yeah?"

"Where are we going?"

It was silent for a moment.

"The mansion," he then responded. "We've got to chase those Trask guys away."

"Oh."

"Why?"

"'Cause I know someone who could help us."

I listened in silence as Peter told Hank where he had to go. It wasn't far away, luckily.

Ten minutes later, Hank parked the truck in front of a house. We stepped onto the cold pavement.

"Maybe it's better if I stay here," Hank said. "I, eh… I don't want to scare someone."

I kinda understood that. You don't get visited by a blue-furred, dangerous monster every day.

Of course, Hank wasn't a monster, but you get the point.

"I will stay here as well," my father added. "I will only slow you down."

I had to remind myself that he couldn't walk, now. It was a bit strange.

"You should go," he said after a moment. "Peter, can you bring Luka and Sean to your home?"

I frowned – had Peter said something about his home? – but decided to just go with it. After all, I couldn't read minds. My father could. He knew what he was talking about.

Sean and I followed the silver-haired boy, who seemed to know exactly where to go. He walked fast, really fast, and I nearly had to run to keep up with him. After a couple of streets, he stopped in front of a house with 'Maximoff' painted on the letterbox.

"Here it is," Peter said.

He seemed a lot more relaxed, now, nearly happy. He rushed forward, and before I could even blink, he was pressing on the doorbell.

After a couple of seconds, a woman opened the door.

She was wearing a robe and had curlers in her hair.

"Good mo-" she began, but when she saw Peter, she clasped her hands in front of her mouth. Tears of happiness moistened her eyes.

"Peter," she whispered, bending down to hug him.

Peter pulled himself out of the embrace.

"Mo-om," he moaned, "I don't have time for this. Where's Wanda?"

Peter's mother seemed used to the kid's impatient personality.

"She's upstairs," she replied. "But she's..."

She hadn't even finished her sentence when her son dashed into the house.

The next moment, he appeared again, this time with a little girl on his back. She looked about the same age as Peter. She had long, brown hair and was dressed in red pajamas.

Peter skidded to a halt right in front of Sean and me.

"...she's still asleep," his mother finished with a sigh.

The girl on Peter's back yawned.

"What's going on?" she asked, rubbing her eyes.

When she opened them, I saw that her eyes were the same colour as Peter's.

"Pietro?" she asked, happiness lacing her sleepy voice. I wondered why she was calling him that. Maybe Peter was a nickname? "You're back!"

"Yeah," the silver-haired kid replied, putting the girl down.

She immediately wrapped her arms around him. I couldn't help but smile, despite the happenings of that night. This was just adorable.

Peter didn't push the girl away, which was unexpected, but hugged her back. When they let go of each other, the small boy turned to us.

"Guys, this is Wanda," he introduced the girl, "my little sister."

She rolled her eyes.

"I'm not your little sister," she said. "We're twins."

Her brother ignored her completely. "Wanda, these people are Luka and Sean." He gestured at each of us when he said our names.

The little girl looked both of us in the eyes. She didn't quite seem to trust us.

She was a clever girl, I realized. I didn't think that I would've trusted two meagre people with bald heads and without pants on who just showed up at my door.

"Okay," she said slowly.

Her brother grinned.

"You've gotta come with us," he said. "I'll explain everything on the way. We need your help, Wanda."

He grabbed his sister by the hand and started to walk away, but their mother interrupted him.

"Peter, wait," she said, walking towards him. "Where are you going?"

She looked at us.

"Who are these people?"

Peter rolled his eyes, sighed deeply, and then started to explain everything so fast that my ears nearly couldn't keep up with the words.

"Remember that time you asked me to go to the shop to get some milk? Well, some guy with sunglasses on asked me to come with him, and I said that I wasn't going to because I had to go home, and then he put some weird blue thing in my neck and I passed out. I woke up in a glass room and with this guy."

He gestured at Sean.

"There were also a couple of other people, but they're dead now. Every day, they took one of us away and experimented on us. After a week or so, they brought Hank in. He's waiting in the car right now. A couple of days after that, Luka, Nate and Charles were taken in. Luka is here -" he pointed at me "- Charles is in the car with Hank, and Nate is dead. He was a cool guy. Anyway, the bad guys stole Charles' serum and put it in us, so that we couldn't use our powers, and we couldn't escape, but then Hank thought up a plan and we escaped, and now we need Wanda's help because the bad guys have snatched the good guys' home and we have to get it back."

The little boy folded his arms, seeming nearly proud of getting all those words out of his mouth.

His mother was silent for a moment.

She didn't even bother asking questions, I realized. I think she just needed to decide whether she trusted her son with this or not.

"Okay," she then said. "You can go. These people sound like good people."

Peter did a small victory dance.

"But, honey... Please, don't leave yet. I haven't seen you in weeks, and besides, Wanda hasn't had breakfast yet. Neither do you, I believe."

The woman looked at us. "

You look on the edge of starving to death, children. Come in, I'll get you a cup of coffee and a slice of bread."

Of course, we couldn't say no to that. Already thanking Ms. Maximoff a hundred times, we followed her into the house.


	13. The Last Words

**AAaAaAagh I'm so happy! I've finally finished this story! Yaaayy!**

 **Don't worry, this isn't the last chapter! :) There are two other chapters coming, and I'm going to publish the next one right after this, and then tonight or maybe tomorrow the epilogue, so stay tuned!**

 **Love you guys!**

* * *

About one and a half hour later, we were sitting in the back of the truck again.

Peter, Sean and I had eaten for the first time in weeks. Never thought that simple bread with peanut butter would ever taste that good, even though I actually hated it. We had also brought a couple of slices of bread and two juice boxes for Charles and Hank. They had finished it by then.

Now, we were heading towards the School. Somehow, Hank had managed to turn the radio on, and I quietly listened to Elvis Presley's latest song. I wasn't sure what it was called, but it managed to cheer me up a little bit.

We were going to get the mansion back. And if we had it back, I was going to grab the nearest phone book, find out where Trask was, and then I was going to kick his ass. I had to do it.

For Nate.

I peered at the body, which was covered in old blankets so that we didn't have to see it. I shivered, and that wasn't only because it was damn cold.

Looking away, I tried to break the nearly-silence.

"So," I asked, "if we get to the mansion... then what are we going to do?"

"Chase Trask's people away," Sean immediately replied.

"Yeah," Hank agreed from behind the metal wall. "But how are we going to keep them away? I don't think Charles is strong enough to brainwash them all and turn them into good, harmless, innocent people. No offense, Charles," he quickly added, "but we're not sure how many of them we'll have to deal with."

My father grinned a bit, even though Hank couldn't see that.

"That is all right, Hank," he replied kindly. "You are right. I cannot brainwash them all."

When I looked around, I saw that Wanda had been smiling the entire time. It was the first time I saw her smile after the reunion with her brother.

"What?" I asked her.

She turned to Peter and said: "So this is why you needed me!"

"What?" Sean asked, also sounding confused, when the silver-haired kid nodded. "What's going on?"

"Wanda can use many different kinds of magic," my father explained. "She can make a force field around the house."

Wanda nodded a little proudly.

"Yeah," she said, "but I can't do it when the bad guys are still inside the building. So you've got to make sure they are outside, then I can do the rest."

I stared at the brown-haired, four-years-old girl, my mouth slightly opened. I had expected her to be extraordinary – of course she had to be, she was Peter's twin sister – but I didn't know that she was able to do something like that. I didn't have to be able to read minds to know that she was a powerful kid.

I admired it, in some way. It must be hard to control something that strong. I wondered what else she could do.

"So, the plan is," Hank's voice interrupted my thoughts, "get Trask's guys out of the mansion and Wanda will put a force field around it."

"Yep."

"Sounds like a good plan. Let's do it."

"Let's go kick some asses," I said, grinning. "I'm ready."

"Me, too," Sean agreed.

"Never been more ready," Peter added.

Wanda just shot us another one of her bright smiles.

When we all looked at Charles, he reacted with: "Why do I always have to say the last words before we go to battle?"

Sean blushed.

"Eh, I don't know," he admitted, scratching the back of his neck. I giggled. "You're good at it, I guess."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Oh," Charles said, grinning at my boyfriend. I noticed that his eyes had gone back to bright blue, the way they used to be. "Okay, well, eh... Let's go kick some asses, I guess."


	14. Time To Fight

**Next to last chapter, guys! We're nearly there, hold on for just a little longer! :)**

 **Enjoy!**

 **Warning: Weird eyes, some swear words, fighting stuff. Nothing too serious.**

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Hank parked the truck behind the hedge, right next to the fence. I got to my feet, walked towards the shutter and unlocked it.

This was it.

We were going to try to get the mansion back.

At that moment, it sounded nuts.

I breathed in, breathed out. Sean put his hand on my shoulder. It was comforting but frustratingly careful. I pulled my boyfriend into a hug, which startled him, but I didn't care; this could be the last time I ever touched him.

When I let go of him, he was grinning.

"Ready?" he asked me.

I nodded. When I replied, it was Firelocks who spoke. The bitch was back.

"Ready."

With that simple word, I pushed the shutter open and jumped out of the truck. Before I even know it, I was running towards the front door, yelling at the top of my lungs.

The two men that were guarding the door pointed their guns at me, but I was faster. I pushed them aside and hurled into the house.

As I dashed up the stairs, I forced myself to focus. Sure, I was happy that the fighter inside me was back, but it wasn't my time to fight yet.

My first task was to get my father's wheelchair, so that he could move but also use his powers. When I asked him why he didn't want the serum, he replied that his powers were telepathic, not physical. He wasn't well with violence, he said.

Second staircase. More stairsteps.

I wondered why I wasn't out of breath yet. Adrenalin, I guessed.

My bare feet pounded on the wood. I crashed into one of Trask's guys. Before he could do anything, I had already smashed my elbow into his face. His nose made an ugly, cracking sound and he fell on the floor.

I sprinted into my father's room – thank God the door was open – and towards the closet where he kept his feared chair. The thing had become a little dusty over the past couple of weeks.

When I pulled the wheelchair out of the closet and rolled it into the corridor, I heard the sound of heavy footsteps.

 _Shit. Someone's coming._

I decided to make a run for it. I hurled down the stairs, pushing the wheelchair. The wheels slammed on the stairsteps with a deafening noise.

I reached the ground floor without any problems. It was chaos downstairs; there were fights everywhere.

Hank was throwing the Trask guys through the room, through the doorway; I had to duck a couple of times to not get hit by one of them.

Wanda kept them outside with some kind of magic, red sparks flying from her hands.

Peter was running so fast that he wasn't even visible, but I knew that he was there because he picked the men up, one by one, and dragged them out of the mansion.

Sean was using all the power he had inside his meagre, lanky body to punch the shit out of the bad guys. He could also use his powers, but I knew that he didn't because he didn't want to hurt the others. I didn't know how, I just knew it.

Peter stopped running right in front of me, nearly giving me a heart attack, and smiled.

"Need a lift?" he asked me.

He didn't even give me the chance to reply – he just picked me up from the ground and carried me towards the truck. Thank God I didn't drop the wheelchair on the way.

I grinned as the kid put me down in front of the vehicle.

"Thanks, Peter."

"You're welcome," he replied before racing away.

"Luka?" my father's voice sounded from behind me. "Are you all right?"

"Fine, Dad!" I shouted back before turning to him. "I've got the chair."

He smiled a little.

"Thank you," he said. "Could you help me, please?"

I nodded and stood up.

I helped him into the wheelchair, and when he had settled himself in the seat, he looked up at me.

"I-I am not sure how much I can do," he said, his voice trembling a little. He was nervous, I realized. "My powers are still weak. I am not sure how many people I can stop before I cave in."

I smiled.

"We're all still a little clumsy," I reassured him. "But we're doing our best and I'm pretty sure that that's enough. We'll get the mansion back. I feel it. We just have to do what's needed to make sure it happens in the future."

I had never been too great with pep talks, but I felt like this one wasn't really bad.

Charles seemed to think for a moment before he replied: "Okay. I will... do my best."

"That's enough," I replied – was it weird that I felt like this conversation was also going to happen somewhere in the future, but with someone else? _*_

He took a deep breath, as if he was gathering courage, then started rolling towards the house, really slowly.

The men that were standing outside – it were quite a lot of them by then – immediately spotted him and started shooting.

I gasped but didn't scream, not wanting to pull my father out of his concentration as he shut all of them out, one by one. After a couple of seconds, all the guys in Trask uniform were lying on the ground.

I sprinted towards Charles as he held his head in his hands, groaning quietly.

"Dad?" I asked.

My thoughts were racing.

Had he been hit?

Had he used too much of his powers?

What was going on?

"Luka, please, do not do that," he moaned, his jaws pinched on each other. "You are giving me a headache."

I frowned.

What had I done – I wasn't doing anything, was I?

"I am all right," he said, calmer now.

He turned to me, eyes big and worried.

"I can read your mind, Luka," he said. "I think your powers have been deactivated. You have to activate them again."

I frowned again; how was that possible? Could I turn my powers on and off?

That was weird.

I nodded and closed my eyes.

I tried to remember the training I had had when I had just discovered my powers. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

 _The closet._

 _Imagine the closet._

 _Open the drawer with the lock._

I put everything I had in pulling that tiny drawer in the smallest corner of the closet. The lock shattered and I caught sight of the whirlpool of colours that was inside the drawer.

Immediately, something clicked inside my head and my powers were back – I hadn't known that I had missed it so much.

It was a heavy feeling, but in a good way; it kept me with both feet on the ground. It was comforting. It felt like I had a lost part of myself back.

I breathed in the cold air and opened my eyes to look right into my father's happy face. It was long ago that I had seen him like that.

Energy flowed through my body.

"I'm going to help," I said, starting to run towards the mansion, towards my friends.

I heard my father chuckle behind me.

"Good luck," he shouted, "my girl."

It was so surprising that I nearly tripped, but I didn't turn around, I just smiled. The gravel crunched beneath my feet as I kept running.

Peter saw me coming and waved at me while tackling a man, who fell flat on his face. Wanda was still standing pretty close to him, her hands in the air, making a wall of red sparks. Her magic was more complicated than I thought, I realized when I jogged right through the sparks. It kept the bad guys outside, but it was no problem for me.

As soon as I came inside the building, something changed. It was like Wanda's magic had enlarged my powers, and it didn't fit just inside my head, anymore.

My vision got split in two.

With my left eye, I saw Sean, Peter, Wanda and Hank standing in the middle of the hall. Hank threw a man outside.

With my right eye, I saw... a Trask guy?

Where was he?

I squinted. He was standing behind a doorway. I watched him as he jumped and slammed his fist against the side of Wanda's head.

My left eye, though, still saw the little girl standing next to the kitchen door.

It took me a second to realize what was going on.

My left eye saw what was happening right now.

My right eye saw the future.

"Wanda, duck!" I yelled, running towards the kitchen door.

She frowned but dropped to the ground immediately. At the moment that the man jumped, I grabbed his shirt and pushed him out of the house.

He was too startled to do anything, and just stumbled through the sparking wall, into my father's reach. He was on the ground in a second.

Wanda looked at me with a startled look on her face, standing up.

"Thanks," she said awkwardly. "Hey, eh... There's something weird going on with your eyes, you may wanna take a look at that."

" _What'_ s going on with my eyes?" I asked, confused.

I turned around so that I was facing the mirror on the wall. Wanda was right; there _was_ something weird going on with my eyes.

My left eye had its usual, blue colour, but my left eye was black. Not just the iris was black; all the white was gone.

It looked really strange, and it kinda scared me, too. I hoped that it was just temporary.

I stood there for, like, three seconds or so before my right eye saw a next threat. Someone with a gun was going to come down the stairs and start shooting. I tackled him before he reached the floor. Peter pulled the man outside.

It kept going like that for a while; I saw someone coming, I made sure they were harmless, and Peter or Hank got him outside.

After about half an hour, nothing was coming, anymore.

"Are we done?" Sean asked.

It was the first time he spoke since we had left the truck. He sounded exhausted.

Wanda nodded.

"Yeah," she replied. "They're all gone, I feel it."

She took a deep breath, and Peter rushed towards her, as if he knew what that meant.

"Wanda," he said, sounding worried, "are you sure you can do this? You've never put a force field around a building that's so big, and you must be tired of keeping that wall thing up for so long, and..."

I had never heard him talk like that before. While he kept listing reasons why she didn't have to do it, I focused on my right eye.

It showed me that Wanda could do it, she could put a force field around the mansion. After that, she would faint, but it was going to be fine; she would be all right.

The little girl's voice in the present pulled me out of my thoughts.

"It's okay, Pietro," she said to her brother. "I can do this."

"She's right," I added, "she can do it. I saw it."

Peter seemed to think for a moment before nodding and walking away.

To Sean, I mouthed: _"Catch her."_

He frowned but nodded. Then we looked at Wanda again.

She was drawing on the wall with her fingers, old and mysterious symbols that glowed with a dull, red light.

When she was done, she stepped back and started to dance. She seemed to be in some kind of trance; her eyes were red and she moved slower and more graciously than a four-years-old was supposed to move.

With every movement, the sparks on her hands grew brighter. At the moment that the light began to hurt my eyes, she put her hands over the symbols on the wall.

The sparks entered the wall and started to spread. Every wall glowed for a moment before they got their usual, simple colour back.

Wanda managed to stay on her feet until the entire force field was complete. Then she passed out.

Sean could catch her just in time, though of course, I had seen that he could do that.

Peter dashed towards them and then turned to me with an angry look on his face.

"You said that she could do it!" he yelled. "Liar!"

Wanda's exhausted voice sounded from behind him.

"Pietro," she whispered, "it's fine. I'm... all right. I did it. You guys are safe."

I couldn't help but smile. We were safe.

Finally.

I ran out of the house, over the gravel lane, towards my father.

He saw me and smiled. I smiled back.

"Wanda did it," I shouted while skidding to a halt. "She put a force field around the house. We're safe."

He didn't reply; just smiled the same happy smile as I had on my face. He didn't say anything about my weird eye, or maybe he just already knew about that.

We remained silent for a while before the most unexpected thing happened: he wrapped his arms around me.

My father was hugging me.

Maybe I had seen it coming. Maybe not.

I was startled for a moment before hugging him back.

And even though the force field wasn't around us, I had never felt safer.

* * *

 _*= Days of Future Past, the scene in the airplane where Logan asks Charles if he can bring the X-Men together in the future. Charles replies: "I will... do my best" and Logan says: "That's enough. Believe me."_


	15. Epilogue

Things got a lot better after that.

Trask got arrested because the things he had done were very illegal, and when the room with the bodies got found by the police, they found that it was enough prove. He and all of his people were locked up in some prison on the other side of the world.

We also managed to get Taurus out of Nate's flat – Hank had to break the door, but we got him out. It was indeed a smart cat; he had lost at least half of his weight, but he had survived by opening the fridge and eating everything in it, bit by bit. I still wasn't sure how he was still alive after weeks. We had taken him home.

But as great those things are, they are nothing compared to the third great thing that happened: the School had opened again!

There were a couple of students – Sean and me, and some other mutant kids we had gathered with Cerebro –, my father taught us English, biology and history, and Hank taught us science, maths and chemistry.

It made my father so happy, and it made me happy to see him happy.

He also tried to teach me how to use my powers, but it wasn't really helping; I had to discover it by myself.

I still secretly freaked out every time I walked past a mirror, and sometimes it was really annoying to know what was going to happen, but I was getting used to it.

Anyway, it was some day in April, and Sean and I were sitting outside, on the small stairstep in front of the door, so that we could see the whole yard.

Sean's hair was just growing back, and now he looked like a cute kitten instead of an intimidating lion. It was kinda adorable.

We were both wearing a hoodie to fight off the early morning chill, and it was silent, that kind of silent that only exists very early in the morning, when the only sounds are the birds' quiet chirping and the sound of your own breath while it makes small clouds in front of your mouth.

I looked out over the grass field with my left eye, and my right eye was doing something else. I focused on it. What was going on?

It was like I was pulled into the image. A vision, for the first time in forever.

 _I saw myself, standing next to a stairway._

 _I was older, a lot older, at least forty or so, but my right eye was still black. I still looked young, though. That was a good sign._

 _"Come on, guys, the school bus is going to leave in a couple of minutes!" my older version yelled to someone upstairs._

 _Two voices, a boy and a girl, shouted back: "Yeah, Mom! Coming!"_

Mom.

I was a mother.

 _A redheaded teenager, about fifteen or sixteen years old, walked down the stairs, lifting a suitcase. One of his eyes was blue, and the other one was completely black._

My son.

 _My older version helped him get the suitcase downstairs._

 _"Nate, are you sure you've got everything packed?" she asked him._

Nate.

 _I had named my son after a friend._

 _It made me smile._

 _"Sean, honey, can you go get Sam? I think she's still packing."_

 _Sean – he looked a lot older, too – nodded and ran upstairs. After a moment, he came down again with a twelve-years-old girl and three suitcases._

 _My older version smiled and looked her son in the eyes, which wasn't hard, because they were about the same height. Even when I was older, I was still small._

 _"Nate, can you keep an eye on Sam?" she asked him. "It's her first year at the School."_

 _Nate smiled and replied: "Mom, it's just grandpa's school. We'll be fine."_

 _"I know, honey," my older version said, kissing Nate on his forehead._

 _She hugged Sam for the last time before she and Sean watched their two children step in the school bus and go off to Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters._

In the present, I smiled, laid my head on Sean's shoulder and hoped with everything I had that that future would come true.

And it did.

 _The End._

* * *

 **Oh, guys, I'm getting a bit emotional here :') ... I'm so sad that I've finished this story, I had so much fun while working on it!**

 **I'm not sure if I'm going to make another story for X-Men, I don't think so, but maybe I will! Don't know yet.**

 **Let me know what you think of this story, and thank you _so much_ , I really love you guys!**

 **Bye! :)**


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